What kinds of grants do crypto ecosystems offer?

Grants for planned work

The most common kind is what Gitcoin calls a direct grant. A person, a committee or an expert reviews proposals, then decides who gets money and how much.¹ Gitcoin calls this "the most widely deployed funding mechanism in the Ethereum ecosystem".¹

Gitcoin also lists the downsides. A small group of reviewers can fall into "groupthink, favoritism, and blind spots". Long proposals, reports and identity checks weigh most on small teams.¹

Wishlists and requests for proposals

Some funders now say what they want before anyone applies. In August 2025, the Ethereum Foundation's ESP paused open applications, saying the high volume had "consumed most of our time and resources".⁷ In November 2025 it reopened, "shifting from a reactive to a proactive approach", through two routes.⁸

• Wishlist: broad areas where ESP sees gaps. Builders propose their own ideas to fill them.⁸
• Request for proposals (RFP): a specific problem, with a set scope, a set application window and an expected length of project.⁸

The Solana Foundation also publishes RFPs "for specific ideas the Foundation is looking to fund".⁹ The Uniswap Foundation describes a programme that spots opportunities, designs grants for them, then works closely with the grantees.¹⁰

Open rounds and hackathons

A round is a window with a theme and a deadline. ESP says each of its rounds "has its own application deadline and selection criteria". On 22 October 2026 it had no active rounds.¹¹

Gitcoin's programme page describes Gitcoin Grants as seasonal: Gitcoin first raises a pool of matching money, then takes applications, reviews them, and opens a period when the public donates.¹² Its October 2025 round, GG24, changed this: under a new "Domain Allocator model", operators appointed by the community ran their own rounds, using quadratic funding and other methods.¹³ In October 2026, an update on Gitcoin's governance forum said quadratic funding would fold into a local-funding pilot rather than stand alone. The post says it gives personal views and targets, not a decision by Gitcoin's governance.¹⁴

The Solana Foundation works with Colosseum to run online hackathons, which it describes as competitions.⁹

Paid in stages: milestone grants

Many planned-work grants are paid in slices. Gitcoin describes milestone-based funding as releasing money "in staged tranches", each one after agreed work is checked.² It calls this the most widely adopted way of paying out web3 grants.²

ESP pays its grants in milestone-based payments.¹⁵ The Solana Foundation offers milestone-based grants for public goods, and milestone-based "convertible grants" for public goods with a commercial side.⁹ Lesson 4 looks at how the payments work.²

Paid afterwards: retroactive funding

Retroactive funding pays for "demonstrated impact rather than proposals for future work".³ Optimism set out the idea in July 2021, in a post with Vitalik Buterin as guest author. His core point: "it’s easier to agree on what was useful than what will be useful."¹⁶ The Optimism team committed to give all its "profits made from sequencing", until it decentralised its sequencer, to public goods funding experiments.¹⁶

In November 2024, Optimism said Retro Funding had 850 million OP set aside. In 2024 it rewarded over 400 builders with 20 million OP across three rounds.¹⁷ It said it would move from yearly rounds to "ongoing impact evaluation and regular rewards throughout the year".¹⁷ In January 2026 the Optimism Foundation paused Retro Funding, saying it "will not run for at least the next 12 months".¹⁸

One example: its Onchain Builders mission, set out in January 2025, had a budget of up to 8 million OP, paid monthly.¹⁹ To qualify, a project needed a verified contract on an eligible chain and, among other tests, at least 1,000 transactions over the last 180 days.¹⁹

Retro funding has weak points, and Optimism has said so. Key builders told it that Retro Funding was "not reliable enough to drive their contributions".¹⁷ Gitcoin adds that new teams may be left out until they have a track record, and that builders wait to be paid.³

Crowd plus match: quadratic funding

In quadratic funding, donors give to the projects they like. A sponsor's matching pool is then shared out "based on how many individual contributors they attract, not just how much money each contributor gives".⁴ Lesson 5 works through the maths.⁴

Bounties

A bounty is a reward for one task. Gitcoin describes it simply: a funder defines a task and sets a reward, and the reward is paid once the work is accepted.⁵ Gitcoin says bounties struggle with complex projects that need people to work together for a long time.⁵ The Uniswap Foundation has funded hackathon events and bounties across eight competitions.¹⁰

Help that isn't cash

Some support is not money at all.^20,6,21

• Advice. ESP's Office Hours are a 20-minute video call for non-financial support. ESP says plainly that they do not offer financial support.²⁰
• Free services. In October 2026, the Arbitrum Foundation listed a programme that pays gas fees for early-stage teams, and one that gives data analysts Dune credits.⁶
• Audits. The Arbitrum Security Program pays part of the cost of a smart contract audit, depending on the agreement with each project.²¹ The Uniswap Foundation has funded a security fund that subsidises audits.¹⁰

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